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2 Fishermen Plead Guilty to Illegal Harvesting

A fishmonger prepares fish at his stall in the Noryangjin Wholesale Fish Market in Seoul early on July 4, 2013. Established in 1927, the Noryangjin Fish Market runs 24 hours a day and is the largest in Seoul. Selling flounder, sea bass, rockfish, king crab, abalone, octopus and oysters, among others, the market supplies most of the Seoul capital area which encompases the Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province to form the world's second largest metropolitan area with over 25.6 million people. Buyers spend almost one million US dollars daily attending raucous early morning auctions that pit wholesale buyers against each other as they vie for the days catch. A popular tourist destination, visitors can select fish which is then prepared, to be eaten raw, by various restaurants flanking some 700 stalls. On July 2 the Korean National Assembly amended its fisheries law to help curb illegal fishing by increasing penalties to a maximum of three times the value of the fish caught. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones (Photo credit should read Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

BALTIMORE — Two Tilghman Island fishermen have pleaded guilty to illegally harvesting and selling more than 185,000 pounds of striped bass.

Forty-one-year-old Michael D. Hayden and 42-year-old William Lednum entered the pleas Friday in federal court in Baltimore. They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison at sentencing in November. They have also agreed to pay restitution to the state of Maryland.

According to their plea agreements, from 2007 to 2011, Hayden and Lednum used illegally weighted or anchored gill nets and exceeded their maximum daily vessel limit of striped bass.

Prosecutors say the fishermen falsified the permit allocation cards and daily catch records, and shipped and sold striped bass to wholesalers for nearly $500,000.